Shute, Nevil by What Happened to the Corbetts

rubble of the wall, and went back to Joan. ‘Let’s have that whisky,’ he said. ‘Littlejohn’s had a knock on the head, but I think he’ll be all right.’
    He took the flask, and felt his way back through the darkness to the other garden. He knelt down beside the builder and lifted him to a sitting position, propped against his knee. He loosened the starched collar that the man was wearing, even in the middle of the night. Then he wet a handkerchief in whisky and water, and began to bathe his face.
    In a few minutes he felt a stir of returning consciousness in the heavy body.
    ‘All right, Mrs. Littlejohn,’ he said. ‘I think he’s coming round.’
    She did not answer; the builder raised his head and seemed to moisten his lips. Corbett put the neck of the flask into his mouth and gave him a drink. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a knock on the head.’
    In a slow minute the builder raised his hand and felt his head. ‘Love us,’ he said thickly. ‘I should think I bloody well had.’ He stirred in Corbett’s arms. ‘That’s all right-I can manage.’
    Corbett released his hold; the man leaned forward and sat alone. ‘Can you feel if you’re hurt anywhere else?’
    ‘I’m all right,’ said the builder heavily. ‘I can manage. Is the missus all right?’
    ‘She’s hurt her leg,’ said Corbett. ‘If you think you can manage by yourself now I’ll go and have a look at her.’
    He got up, and crossed over to where the woman was still sitting propped against the wall. He bent and spoke to her; she did not answer. He touched her, and cried in alarm: ‘Littlejohn! Come over here-quick, man!’
    But she was already dead. The bomb had fallen on or near their greenhouse. A flying fragment of the glass had sheared through all her clothes and wounded her behind the knee. She had bled to death, quietly and unostentatiously, as in everything that she had done.
    It was incredible to them; they worked for a long time before they would admit defeat, while the bombs continued falling, sometimes near, sometimes far away.
    Presently the builder picked her up in his arms and, staggering a little, carried her into the house and upstairs to the bedroom, where the candle was still burning. He laid her on the ornate, gilded iron bed beneath a picture of the ‘Stag at Bay’ and a text in a wood Oxford frame that told them ‘God is Love’, and covered her with a counterpane.
    Then they had done all they could do.
    Corbett touched the builder on the shoulder. ‘Come down into our trench for the night,’ he said gently. ‘It’s safer down there.’
    The builder said: ‘I’ll stay here for a while, thanking you, all the same.’
    Corbett hesitated. ‘You’re quite sure? It would be better in the trench, you know.’
    The man shook his head. ‘You go back to your family, Mr. Corbett. I’ll be all right.’ He said: ‘I want to sit with her a bit.’
    Corbett went down into the garden, and back into his own trench across the rubble. He told Joan what had happened. ‘Leave him alone,’ she said. ‘It’s best that way.’
    They sat m the trench for about two hours after that, aching and wet, cold and sad. In the window of the house next door the candle burned on, flickering in the draughts. From time to time the bombs fell in their neighbourhood, none very near; the distant gunfire was continuous, and apparently quite ineffective. At last came the long lull that they knew from experience meant the end.
    ‘It’s over now,’ he said at the end of twenty minutes. ‘We can go back to bed.’
    They got the children up out of the trench, muddy and exhausted, took them back into the house, washed them in warm water, and put them to bed. Then they went down into the kitchen.
    ‘Let’s have something to eat,’ said Corbett.
    ‘All right.’ She looked at him irresolutely. ‘I just hate to think of him in there, alone,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t come and have a meal with us, would he?’
    Corbett